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Report 1668
Special Report #1668 Skillset: Kata Skill: Yet-Another-Poisons-Report Org: Shofangi Status: Rejected Dec 2007 Furies' Decision: Not at this time, we can consider if this is necessary after current changes are tested. Problem: Monk aff-rate is difficult to get a good hold on due to the RNG of poisons. For a monk with access to two arm actions of a given aff type the aff rate before surge is 2-4 afflictions depending on RNG. 2 afflictions is too low to build any aff pressure without boosting but 4 massively outpaces curing. In addition to this the combination of mantakaya and niricol means that a monk with dust afflictions on arm actions can build 2-4 dust affs and greatly hinder the target from attacking back. This report seeks to remove or lower the possibiltiy of monks achieving 4 afflictions of the same type in a form and/or to eliminate the mantakaya/niricol combo. Solution #1: Cause monk armed attacks to "attempt" the poison first, and only if it doesn't rub or is shrugged would the actual arm affliction come through. Solution #2: Dramatically lower the poison transfer rate on afflicting arm attacks. Special arm attacks (ideally gated by surge/another stance) could poison normally and still afflict. Solution #3: Disallow monks from using mantakaya. Player Comments: ---on 4/4 @ 14:38 writes: An example of this would be kumati in shofangi, which causes rigormortis on the chest. If my shofa has mantakaya on it, and the rub is successful, and it's successfully unshrugged then that strike would only cause paralysis. However if the poison does not rubbed, or is shrugged, or if the blade was wiped, then the rigormortis affliction would come through. This allows monks the flexibility to use poisons whenever they'd like without increasing the aff rate and more importantly allows us to a) grant monks armed moves of the different aff types without unbalancing things and b) allows us to more finely tune the number of afflictions per form. ---on 4/8 @ 02:36 writes: As a note, this effectively LOWERS monk aff rate. Which I'm fine with on a conceptual basis, but I actually do not feel is needed. At the moment, I won't support this, because I'm concerned that the current aff rate is already at a balanced place with the removal of all early stance afflictions plus the locking of aff-kicks to Surge. I don't believe this is needed at the moment. In the current status quo, I have not had concerns raised of hemorrhaging rate - if it is at a balanced (or near balanced) state, then further changes to aff rate is not needed. ---on 4/8 @ 10:15 writes: My main concern right now is niricol+mantakaya frankly, and my understanding of the solution that was approved for the paralysis report is that it's not going to address the issue that for a monk it's almost always a good idea to use niricol + mantakaya with two dust arm actions if you have them. I am not as convinced as you are that we are at a balanced place currently, being able to cause 2-4 dust affs a form is fairly strong and in my opinion difficult to balance because the range is so high, on the low end we only build aff pressure at boosting, and on the high end (4 affs) we easily outpace curing. The only way I can think of to deal with this is either a) make poisons far less reliable on afflicting strikes (which lowers the aff rate like this current solution 1 does) or b) make it so that monks cannot envenom mantakaya (or niricol) to see what impact that has. Which I'm going to add as solutions to this report. ---on 4/10 @ 13:55 writes: I think the niricol+mantakaya problem is valid, yes. A solution aimed at that is something I can support. However, I disagree that 2-4 affs is a concern. I think it's fine that the low end (2 affs) does not pressure cure balance - and in return, the high end (4 affs) can do so easily. That's the nature of RNG, and if you're lucky enough to get a streak of high end output, you're also going to be getting streaks of low end output - and with what Kalikai explained on the forums, the RNG is now much more likely to fall on the low end than high end because of the lack of access to wounds. 4 affs is going to be fairly rare, and I think that is fair. Lowering aff rate to ONLY 2 affs, max, at the lower stances is simply far too low. As it is, I feel like the poison proc rate (see previous statement about Kalikai's explanation on forums) need to be boosted so that 3 affs are at least going to be fairly common, because otherwise, the rate is too low. As it is, none of these solutions really solve the niricol+mantakaya problem anyway. Only solution 3 directly targets niricol+mantakaya, and there's always beast spit for mantakaya even for solution 3. I'm opposed to any solution that has the side effect of lowering the current aff rate - which is both solutions 1 and 2. ---on 4/14 @ 03:15 writes: I've said similar things before, but I don't think it's necessarily poisons that are a problem, but you've probably got a better read on the class than me. I think the overwhelming affliction output can be addressed in other ways. ---on 4/14 @ 12:44 writes: I realize that I didn't explicitly say this, but the advantage of removing/reducing RNG in its role in our aff rate is that we can more precisely calibrate the number of afflictions we do per form meaning that we could do things like add afflicting kicks or afflicting stances back in for certain aff types/certain stances and know that over the course of 5 stances that we're delivering exactly (or closer to exactly) x dust/ice/lucidity/steam affs. Right now you have to add +0-2 probability to each form which in most cases pre surge is a 100% range (since you can only do 2 affs "natively" anyway so you do 2 at minimum and 4 at maximum) which make our aff output pretty highly dominated by RNG. Tldr, if we ever want toys pre-surge again I think we'll have to deal with poisons in some way, even if it doesn't totally solve the manta+niricol issue. That said it looks like manta+niricol is being solved by the paralysis report after all and we're already moving in the direction of stances not having afflictions early so it may be too late for this sort of idea either way. ---on 4/18 @ 04:24 writes: I'm not entirely sure this is relevant given the proposed changes to mantakaya - changing the effect from hindering to one that delays tumble. Else, solution 1 is fine. ---on 4/19 @ 13:14 writes: With the upcoming changes to Mantakaya, I believe waiting and seeing before making more changes like this is a better choice. I'm not really keen on adding "toys" back to pre-surge, but if nerfing poisons (solution 1) leads to the ability to give affliction kicks pre-surge, it might be a possible route. Flat 2 affs and no more for the pre-surge forms is, I feel, too low for an archetype that is so dependent on affs being leftover to even build any progress to their instakill.